A current practice by obstetricians is to utilize obstetric forceps for grasping a baby's head during childbirth. Generally, obstetric forceps have metal elements which are used to grasp a baby's head and assist in the birth by pulling on the forceps to extract the infant through the birth canal and out of the mother's body.
With obstetric forceps there is a risk of injury to a baby's head, the injury ranging from nerve damage to impression fractures of the skull caused by excessive pressure applied by the forceps to the infants head during delivery. The pressure on an infant's head is not adequately controllable because the obstetrician must rely on finger sensitivity which is displaced from the baby by the length of the forceps. If the obstetrician is strong or inexperienced excess forceps pressure may occur.
Moreover, obstetric forceps have a particular shape whereas baby's heads have different shapes so that situations arise where pressure is applied at inappropriate locations on the infant's head at excessive levels. Clearly, forceps tend to isolate from an obstetrician or other birthing practitioner from the infant being delivered.
In view of these considerations there is a need for an approach to birth canal obstetrics which does not rely on forceps.